THE FAERIE QUEENE by Edmund Spenser TO The ... - Planet.ee

www.TaleBooks.comTo whom, for endlesse horrour of his shame,He offred up for daily sacrifizeMy children and my people, burnt in flameWith all the tortures that he could devize,The more t' aggrate his God with such his blouddy guize.XX. "And underneath this Idoll there doth lieAn hideous monster that doth it defend,And feedes on all the carkasses that dieIn sacrifize unto that cursed feend;Whose ugly shape none ever saw, nor kend,That ever scap'd: for of a man, they say,It has the voice, that speaches forth doth send,Even blasphemous words, which she doth brayOut of her poysnous entrails fraught with dire decay."XXI. Which when the Prince heard tell, his heart gan earneFor great desire that Monster to assay,And prayd the place of her abode to learne;Which being shew'd, he gan him selfe streightwayThereto addresse, and his bright shield display.So to the Church he came, where it was toldThe Monster underneath the Altar lay:There he that Idoll saw of massy goldMost richly made, but there no Monster did behold.XXII. Upon the Image with his naked bladeThree times, as in defiance, there he strooke;And the third time out of an hidden shadeThere forth issewd from under th' Altars smookeA dreadfull feend with fowle deformed looke,That stretcht it selfe as it had long lyen still;And her long taile and fethers strongly shooke,That all the Temple did with terrour fill;Yet him nought terrified that feared nothing ill.XXIII. An huge great Beast it was, when it in lengthWas stretched forth, that nigh fild all the place,And seem'd to be of infinite great strength:Horrible, hideous, and of hellish race,Borne of the brooding of Echidna base,Or other like infernall furies kinde;For of a Mayd she had the outward face,To hide the horrour which did lurke behinde,The better to beguile whom she so fond did finde.XXIV. Thereto the body of a dog she had,Full of fell ravin and fierce greedinesse;A Lions clawes, with powre and rigour clad,To rend and teare what so she can oppresse;A Dragons taile, whose sting without redresseFull deadly wounds where so it is empight;And Eagles wings, for scope and speedinesse,That nothing may escape her reaching might,Page 591 , Faerie Queene, The - Edmund Spenser